The Whitworthian

Issue date: 11/20/07

Outer space freaks me out.

It’s gargantuan. It’s dark and there are enormous balls of swirling gas everywhere with chunks of space rock that hurl about at warp speeds. Apparently there’s some kind of cosmic order within the chaos where planets have moons that orbit around them in elliptical fashion. Earth has one of these moons.  People have been there. That’s weird.

I don’t understand much about astrophysics, but I do know that we really need the moon and that we shouldn’t mess with it. Middle school science class taught me that the moon’s slight gravitational pull has something to do with controlling Earth’s tides. And tides are important to ecosystems. Therefore, don’t mess with tides, so don’t mess with the moon.

Recently I have been amused and disturbed about an article I read on BBC.com concerning the moon. Science fiction lovers have longed dreamt of moon colonization, but that dream may become reality sooner than we might think. According to the article, "Making a mint off of Moon," written by Nick Davidson, the United States, Russia and China are in a race to the moon in order to stake out land for colonization.

Why? It’s because of the world’s environmental interest in an element known as helium 3. The plan is to strip-mine the moon which apparently has an abundance of helium 3 trapped under the lunar soil that is supposed to solve all our energy crises here on Earth. The article reads, “Scientists believe that this helium 3 could be used to create a new source of almost inexhaustible, clean, pollution-free energy on Earth. Plans are already afoot in the US and Russia to strip-mine lunar helium 3 and transport it the 240,000 miles back to earth.” No, this is not an episode of"Battlestar Galactica." It’s actually even more absurd and appalling.

It will be a sad day when Earth has been exploited to the point where we must turn to exploiting the moon as well. Why not take better care of managing the resources we have here on our own planet before strip-mining our innocent little lunar rock that controls our tides? Bringing an element to Earth that is not even from Earth is risky in itself, let alone using this out-of-this-world element for processes here on this planet.

More attention should be brought to this cosmic issue that affects us all.

The campaign has begun: “Save the Moon”.

Dani King is an opinions columnist and a sophomore majoring in journalism and peace studies. Contact her at dani.king@whitworthian.com.

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